SOCIOLINGUISTICS

SOCIOLINGUISTICS: THEORY

Monica Heller

1. INTRODUCTION

In 1980, in this journal, Joshua Fishman presented the major theoretical

issue in sociolinguistics as being the link between microsociolinguistic and
macrosociolinguistic processes. In 1984 that is still the case, although the
issue is receiving more explicit attention than it did four years ago.

There are two branches of sociolinguistics which approach this issue in

different ways. These two branches are interactionist and variationist
sociolinguistics. Interactionist sociolinguistics is principally interested
in what language use can tell us about social processes, and therefore a
central concern is the social meaning of language use. Variationist
sociolinguistics is interested in accounting for linguistic variation and
change, at least partly as a product of the social distribution of language
varieties. It is, therefore, less concerned with meaning as process, and
more concerned with the interaction of linguistic and social systems; in this
view the significance of language is mainly symbolic. In this review, I will
discuss the contributions of these branches to the problem of the relation-
ship between microsociolinguistics and macrosociolinguistics, as well as the
theoretical problems peculiar to each branch.

Sociolinguistics can also be seen as consisting of studies falling into

two major areas of focus. One focus is on language change processes;
included here are studies of language loss, attrition or death, language
maintenance or revival, language contact, and first and second language
learning. The second focus is on language use in situated social interaction;
included here are studies of language use in the courtroom, in the classroom,
in job interviews, in medical interviews, in interethnic interaction, in
chiefly meetings, in bars, and so on. These studies will be discussed as
they relate to interactionist and variationist approaches to the micro/
macrosociolinguistics problem.

2. MICROSOCIOLINGUISTICS VS. MACROSOCIOLINGUISTICS

It is important, first, to clarify what is meant by the terms

microsociolinguistics and macrosociolinguistics. Fishman (1980) conceived
of the relationship between the two as being similar to a relationship
between linguistics and sociology. In other words, for Fishman,
microsociolinguistics was primarily concerned with studying the linguistic
system as that system was influenced by social factors, while macrosocio-

47
48 MONICA HELLER

linguistics referred to the study of the social distribution of languages

and its relationship to social processes. However, I do not believe that
this is the sense in which the microsociolinguistics vs. macrosociolinguistics
issue has recently taken form. Instead, this distinction reflects an
opposition between a focus on language in spatially, socially, and temporally
bounded social interactions on the one hand, and a focus on language in social
processes that affect large groups of people over relatively long periods of
time and over a relatively large territory on the other. This distinction
has recently been the focus of calls for integration of the two areas of
sociolinguistics (Brice Heath 1984, Bennett 1984, Breton 1984, Language Policy
Task Force 1984; cf., Collins 1981 for a similar discussion for sociology).
Brice Heath has argued that microsociolinguistics has focused for too long on
describing patterns of language use in social interactions, belaboring the
point that patterns of language use are cultural conventions and are
culturally and socially variable, negotiable, and changeable. Instead, she
says, sociolinguists have to go beyond this; they have to "say what it
means." In order to "say what it means," sociolinguists must appeal to the
social context of the interactions on which they focus, and they must examine
the relationship between what is said (or written) and the social roles,
statuses, and relationships of the speakers (or writers). Bennett has gone
further to call not only for an embedding of microsociolinguistic analyses in
social context, but also in historical context. He argues, in other words,
for an examination of the relationship between the here and now and not only
other social interactions but also the development of social processes and
organization over time, especially insofar as the past can inform us as to
how the interaction under scrutiny came to pass. Both these points of view
are reflected in developments in interactionist and variationist socio-
linguistics.

3. INTERACTIONIST VS. VARIATIONIST SOCIOLINGUISTICS

The distinction between interactionist and variationist sociolinguistics

harks back to Fishman's view of the micro- vs. macrosociolinguistics
distinction, in that interactionist sociolinguistics is most concerned about
how language use processes inform social processes, whereas variationist
sociolinguistics is most concerned about how social factors (and sometimes
social processes) inform linguistic processes. Both approaches, however,
face the problem of linking linguistic data to social context. While there
are some areas of difference in their approach to the problem, there has
recently been a resurgence of interest on the part of both groups in the
explanatory power of the concept of social network.

The concept of social network is, of course, not new in itself (cf.,
e.g., Bott 1971, Barnes 1972, Boissevain and Mitchell 1973). Gumperz
(1982a; cf., also Blom and Gumperz 1972) and Gal (1979) were already
applying the concept in sociolinguistics in the 1970s, as was Labov in his
studies of Martha's Vineyard and of adolescent boys' gangs (Labov 1972).
More recently, stimulated largely by Milroy's (1980) work in Belfast, it
has increasingly been applied in variationist work (Labov, et at. 1983), and
also in the area of language contact (Blanc, et al. 1982).

In the interactionist approach, the concept of social network is used

to explain how cultural conventions of language use come to be established.
This has recently been best expressed by Gumperz (1982b); the notion is
 SOCIOLINGUISTICS 49

that people who interact, who bear social relationships to each other, come
to share knowledge, or interpretations of how the world works, and this is
reflected in shared patterns of language use which conventionally reflect
shared knowledge. The notion of network is important in that it provides a
means of linking the establishment of shared knowledge in face-to-face
interaction to social processes—to the macrosociolinguistic context—
because it provides an explanation for how social interaction is itself
patterned and constrained. It thus permits sociolinguistics to link social
interactions to each other, in order to explain how knowledge pertinent to
individuals is tied to knowledge shared by larger groups. Finally, networks
provide a link to larger-scale political and economic processes, since those
processes can be seen to affect social organization (including social
networks) in general.

Breitborde (1983) has argued that the concept of network does not do
the job of linking micro-level and macro-level processes, because it does not
account for the ambiguity of multiple statuses which may obtain in any given
situation. This is best accounted for, he argues, by appealing to Fortes'
concept of domains of social life, each of which may have its own principles
of organization and sets of statuses. Ambiguity of multiple statuses is
explained by "degree of overlap between domains" (p. 26); Brice Heath, Gal and
Milroy, in their comments on Breitborde's paper a few pages further along,
contend that networks can indeed address this problem through the concepts of
the density and multiplexity of networks. In addition, Milroy and Gal argue
that networks, but not domains, can account for the definition, transmission,
and change of the opinions and values which inform individual speakers' use
of linguistic resources in the accomplishment of social goals. In this
respect, networks link micro-level and macro-level processes in more ways
than do domains.

Approaches which try to account for individual intention and inferencing

often link microsociolinguistic to macrosociolinguistic processes through
the concept of social outcomes of encounters. These studies focus on what
Gumperz (1982b) has called "key situations"—situations which make a
difference to participants in terms of their eventual or immediate access to
relationships (such as making friends), to roles or statuses (such as
passage from candidate to Ph.D.), or to participation in activities (such as
getting a job, admission to law school, admission to special education
programs, or simply classroom activities such as reading aloud, or job
responsibilities such as representing the company at an important meeting).
Key situations are in some sense the other side of the coin of networks,
since it is through networks of social relationships that one gains access
to key situations. Among these studies of key situations have been examina-
tions of:

a. language use (and non-verbal communication) in the classroom, and

its consequences for school performance and evaluation and for
access to educational resources (Carrasco, Vera, and Cazden 1981,
Collins 1982, Erickson and Shultz 1982, Michaels 1982, Brice Heath
1983, Mehan 1983, and Cazden in press);

b. language in the courtroom and consequences for evaluations of

court cases (O'Barr 1982);
50 MONICA HELLER

c. language use in medical interviews and consequences for definition

of diagnosis and treatment, for access to medical care, and for
patient-doctor cooperation (Cicourel 1980; 1981, Shuy 1980, Fisher
and Todd 1983);

d. language use in group deliberations or committee negotiations

(Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz 1982, Duranti 1983).

The concept that shared knowledge is established through interaction, and

takes the form of socially defined frames of reference, is derived from work
in the area of cognitive information processing (e.g., Schank and Abelson
1977), cognitive anthropology (Frake 1980, Agar 1982), and ethnomethodology
and cognitive sociology (Garfinkel 1972, Cicourel 1973; 1980), where various
terms (scripts, schemata, frames, frames of reference, etc.) have been used
to describe the ways in which we learn to recognize (and hence interpret) our
experience (and hence knowledge). Cicourel in particular has been concerned
to demonstrate not only how such schemata influence, and are influenced by,
language use in social interaction, but also how they are linked to the
social organizational processes that form the context of the interaction
under study (Cicourel 1980; 1982). As an example, he shows how the organi-
zation of medical care in the United States, in particular the role and
structure of medical charts, has an impact on the process of history-taking
and on diagnostic interpretation and inference in medical interviews.

3.1. In attempting to link microsociolinguistic and macrosociolinguistic

processes, and especially in attempting to account for social meaning in
doing so, interactionist sociolinguistics has encountered two major
problems. One problem is that of attributing possibly too much influence to
microsociolinguistic processes themselves. Leitner (1983) reminds us that
if interactionist sociolinguists agree that background social factors, such
as the local economic or political situation, form part of interlocutors'
background knowledge, and probably influence their immediate attitudes to
and goals in social interaction, it would be well not to exclude such
factors from our account of the development and outcomes of conversational
processes, rather than tending to account for such development and outcomes
purely in terms of the conversational processes themselves and of their
cultural correlates. In other words, it is not enough to say that language
use is culturally conventionalized and that this has consequences for social
interaction; it is also necessary to appeal to non-communicative factors,
usually economic or political factors, at both the personal and societal
levels, which may be informing participants' approaches to their encounters.

3.2. The second problem is potentially much more serious. Interactionist

sociolinguistics has taken as a central concern the discovery of the social
meaning of language use, but as scholars such as Brice Heath (1984) and
Bennett (1984) have suggested, the field has often been too content to
describe what there is rather than to try to discover what it means. However,
even where the explicit focus is on the discovery of meaning, the problem
arises of how to go about doing that. How is it possible for a non-
participant, the sociolinguist-analyst, to discover what conversational
processes or events mean to participants, and to discover how participants
go about constructing those meanings? Mathiot (1983) offers the "self-
disclosure technique" for discovering "meaning attribution," saying, in
effect, that members of a culture will share, and be able to articulate,
 SOCIOLINGUISTICS 51

interpretations of what goes on in an interaction. Gumperz (1982b),

Cicourel (1980; 1982), Erickson and Shultz (1982), and others use versions
of this technique, with the difference that, unlike Mathiot, they do "directly
address the practical and logical reasoning abilities of members of the
culture" (Corsaro 1983:67). Indeed Corsaro, as well as Erickson (1983),
criticize Mathiot on the grounds that people are probably "limited capacity
information processors" (Corsaro 1983:67) and what they tell you after-the-
fact, unable to re-examine the events themselves, may be quite far removed
indeed from what they thought at the time, or may represent only one part of
the many potentially present levels of interpretation. Thus, while Mathiot
is principally concerned with meaning attributed after-the-fact, the others
mentioned are concerned with how it is that interlocutors go about inter-
preting what is happening in a conversation and what it is about the
characteristics of language use in an interaction that provides a basis for
interpretation.

However, the procedure of asking participants to talk about what they

think is (or thought was) happening in a conversation, even if the events
themselves are accessible through playback of recordings or re-enactment
through role-play, has been criticized on the grounds that one cannot count
on people being able to articulate their interpretive processes or on people
wanting to represent them faithfully without regard to potential loss of
face (Leitner 1983, Auer 1984). On the other hand, analysts' inferences on
the basis of regularity of occurrence of patterns of behavior, a standard
practice of ethnomethodology, has been equally criticized as subject to
observer bias. In an attempt to cope with these problems, Cicourel (1980;
1982) proposes a "triangulation of methods" and a "top-down, bottom-up"
approach, which provide the analyst with more than one way of approaching
interpretation. Along with Gumperz (1982b), Erickson and Shultz (1982),
Agar (1984), Cazden (in press), and others, Cicourel proposes a combination
of ethnographic elicitation and observation of regularities of behavior
correlated with social outcomes, in the context of a larger research design
which provides for selection of a research focus on the basis of social
contextual factors (top-down), and interpretation of regularities of
behavior in the chosen research situation in the context of the social
factors which motivated choice of the research situation in the first place
(bottom-up). The aim is to be able both to verify observational categories
and to verify interpretation by predicting correlates in more than one
social activity and at more than one level of social organization. Although
it is rarely stated explicitly, meaning is seen to reside in the consequences
of verbal behavior for interlocutors' roles and statuses, and in the rights
and obligations on which those roles and statuses rest (Heller 1984a;
1984b). Thus, while at first glance this issue may seem to be mainly
methodological, it is theoretical in its consequences for the definition of
meaning and, therefore, for views of how language use in social interaction
is linked to social processes through shared views of the world.

3.3. For variationlst sociolinguistics, the concept of network as linking

language and social factors plays a different role, with different theoreti-
cal consequences. Variationist sociolinguistics has been criticized for not
seeing the conversations from which its data are drawn as having social
meaning themselves (Thibault 1983, drawing on Bourdieu), and for often using
sociological variables which are not organically connected to the source of
the data (although I would claim this is truer of work carried out in
52 MONICA HELLER

Montreal by G. Sankoff, D. Sankoff, Cedergren, and their colleagues, than it

is of much of Labov's work). The problem has been to demonstrate, not that
linguistic variation does correlate (sometimes well, sometimes not so well)
with pre-defined sociological variables, but what it is about those social
variables that links them to linguistic variables, or vice versa. Thibault
has attempted to deal with this problem partly by accepting the social
meaningfulness of any encounter from which sociolinguistic data are drawn
but, since her major concern is with the linguistic implication of socio-
linguistic variation (as is the case, e.g., for Sankoff 1980), she prefers to
rely on sociologists for the refinement of the social variables pertinent to
linguistic variation. For others, notably Milroy (1980) and Labov, et al.
(1983), the concept of social network has provided a means of linking other
social factors (such as sex, age, status, and so on) to the problem of why
certain subgroups share patterns of variability for specific linguistic
variables and not for others. In many respects, this is the same problem as
that faced by interactionist sociolinguistics, although the linguistic
object of study is variability of linguistic features, not discourse or con-
versation patterns, and the data base comes mainly from interviews rather
than naturally occurring socially definable interactions. Milroy (1980) and
Labov, et al. (1983) have pointed out, however, as Gal showed in her 1979
study, that network alone is not enough. It is necessary to understand
what it is about the network that provides for shared world view and hence
shared patterns of speaking (in an interactionist's terms). In Gal's case,
it was the degree to which members of a network participate in industrial or
agricultural activities and, in Labov's, what is important is participation
in economic activities involving interethnic interaction. (It is interesting
that in both cases it is economic activity that seems to make the difference,
and that that is true also of Labov's (1972) study of Martha's Vineyard;
see also Wilhite (1982).) Milroy proposes that the link lies in the
relationship between personal network and social status, which must be
determined ethnographically.

It is possible that the difficulty of tying language, network, and

status is tied to Hymes' (1984:44) comment that a focus on language as a
system may not account for the links between social and linguistic processes
as well as a focus on verbal repertoire (cf., Gumperz 1972 for a discussion
of the concept of verbal repertoire). This is again linked to Thibault's
point that any source of language data is socially meaningful and that
analyses of linguistic variation may have to account for that meaning. The
concept of verbal repertoire explicitly links linguistic variation to
socially significant situations of language use (and so, indirectly, to
social network). It thereby may address the problem more directly than the
traditional variationist view which ties style (sets of linked variants) to
a concept of formality defined only by degree of attention (monitoring)
paid to one's own speech and correlated to norms defined usually by social
class. Thibault (as well as Bell (1984)) points out that it probably makes
more sense to examine the nature of the social relationship(s) obtaining
between participants in a speech event than to look for external constrain-
ing factors. Dorian (1981), Gal (in press), and Mougeon, et al. (in press)
also discuss the notion of speech styles as related to verbal repertoire
or network through the concept of social separation of domains of language
use in bilingual situations. These studies look at the consequences for
variation within each language of a bilingual's verbal repertoire of
patterns of participation in circumscribed, limited social activities
 SOCIOLINGUISTICS 53

associated with the use of each language, and they show how variation in one
language is reduced as the range of activities in which an individual
participates using that language is restricted. (See also Lambert and Freed
(1982) for a discussion of language loss or attrition.)

Auer and di Luzio (1983) have approached the similar problem of

variation in Italian-German bilingual children's speech in a related way by
looking at discourse functions (not of isolated variables but of sets of
variables) as they relate to speech situations. For these authors the
concept of verbal repertoire is also a more powerful explanatory framework
than either linguistic or social variation alone can account for, and they
argue that variation can only be understood as a continuum linked to variable
social relationships as they inform discourse in situated encounters.

3.4. Thus, while both interactionist and variationist sociolinguistics have

dealt with the problem of the link between micro- and macrosociolinguistics
by appealing to the concept of social network, doing so has left unresolved
certain theoretical issues in both areas. For interactionist socio-
linguistics the problem is primarily one of defining and examining the
social meaning that is the focus of the approach, while for variationist
sociolinguistics the problem is both one of dealing with meaning within
language use situations and one of conceptualizing linguistic variation in
terms of socially meaningful situations.

In the following section I will deal with the substantive areas of focus,
of language change and language use, and their contributions to recent socio-
linguistic theory.

4. LANGUAGE CHANGE AND LANGUAGE USE

With certain notable exceptions, to which I will return below, it has

probably already become clear that interactionist sociolinguistics tends
to focus on language use in social interaction while language change is more
often the province of variationist sociolinguistics. However, there are
already trends in both areas which reveal the importance of situated inter-
action in the study of linguistic variation and change and the importance
of variation and change in understanding the relationship between linguistic
and social processes in face-to-face interaction. While many studies
mentioned above exemplify these trends, in this section I will discuss two
substantive subfields which are particularly contributing to this develop-
ment: the study of discourse style (especially as pertains to children's
development of oral and written discourse styles) and the study of first-
and second-language acquisition.

4.1. Studies of children's discourse styles have begun to take the approach
that speech situation interacts with social background to produce a range
of discourse styles appropriate to certain kinds of speakers under certain
kinds of social circumstances (Cazden, Michaels, and Tabors in press,
Hemphill 1984). In other words, children learn different ways of speaking
according to their social background and their social role: socioeconomic
class, ethnocultural background, and sex are all factors that seem to be
linked to ways of speaking. None of this is new, but what is new is the
idea that, when confronted with new language use situations (such as they
might find when they start school), children develop strategies for dealing
54 MONICA HELLER

with this new situation based on the cultural conventions of language use
that they already have. Thus, communicative situations may present specific
communicative constraints, which speakers have to deal with based on the
communicative resources they already possess. Again, the concept of verbal
repertoire is invoked, but inter- and intra-speaker variation is linked
both to the community in which ways of speaking are learned and to the
challenges and constraints imposed by new experiences as social networks and
activities become more elaborated or change. Heller (1982) has discussed
changes in conversational routines which are linked not to an individual's
passage into new roles (i.e., change on the level of individual experience)
but to social change which is experienced (although experienced differently)
by all members of the community. Social change alters the background
knowledge about social relationships which conversational routines reflect
and symbolize, and so speakers must tap their (socio—) linguistic resources
for strategies to negotiate new frames of reference and new routines.

4.2. Studies of first- and second-language acquisition have similarly had

recourse to the concepts of the social negotiation of meaning, and the
acquisition or development through social interaction of conversational
strategies which permit further sociolinguistic and linguistic development
(cf., e.g., Wong Fillmore 1980; 1982, Schieffelin 1979). Here again,
language development is understood as embedded in situated social context.

4.3. Just as sociolinguistics, particularly interactionist sociolinguistics,

has recently made a contribution to the study of first-, and especially
second-language learning, as witnessed by the spurt in the literature on
this subject, so language learning research is, by interpreting linguistic
and sociolinguistic approaches, contributing to work in the areas of
language contact and language loss or language attrition (Clyne 1984).
Similarly, work on discourse style is related to work in language contact
(Gal in press, Mougeon, et al. in press). I believe that these links are
developing out of the work being done in these fields, are employing
interactionist and variationist or linguistic approaches, and are contribut-
ing to tying together changes in linguistic processes and changes in social
processes.

5. CONCLUSION

It appears that recent major theoretical developments in sociolinguis-

tics are leading up to posing questions about the exact nature of the
relationship between language and society. What is it about the way we use
language that has an impact on social processes? What is it about social
processes that influences linguistic ones? Before attempting to answer
those questions, sociolinguists are setting up theoretical constructs
(network, repertoire, context-embeddedness) which will permit the link
between language and society to be demonstrated as a process, not just as
a correlation, symbol, or a reflection.

As pointed out earlier, in order for this to be possible certain

theoretical and methodological problems need to be worked out, notably the
verifiability or generalizability of analysts' inferences of speakers'
meanings, and the incorporation of situational embeddedness into
variationist analyses. Also, further developments will have to take into
account different trends of social and linguistic arrangements. While
 SOCIOLINGUISTICS 55

studies undertaken during the 1970s in the ethnography of speaking did an

admirable job of representing a wide range of societal types and language
families, the same does not seem to be true of more recent work which appears
to be biased in favor of Western urban industrial communities. However,
that is a problem that can be addressed at the next level of theory-building,
once the link between microsociolinguistics and macrosociolinguistics has
been more strongly forged.

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